Answering this is extremely difficult, maybe impossible, when the person asking the question is not a hunter, which usually is the case. We do not speak the same language, in effect.

Primal feelings are within all people, I believe, but to various degrees. Some people who do not hunt, and who oppose hunting, like to believe that they answer a higher calling for not having any desire to hunt. More likely, I believe, is that those primal urges to hunt have not surfaced in people who have never hunted. Just a guess.

For me, I was raised by a hunter, and hunting was presented in a positive way. I vividly remember hunting when I was just 4 years old, taking my bow and arrows into the overgrown fields bordering the yard where I lived to hunt for anything. Thoughts of eating what I hunted had not yet entered my mind. I was simply answering a natural instinct to hunt.

The main difference between myself and kids who would grow up to become opponents of hunting was opportunity.

And of course the adults around me had influences. I cannot recall ever hearing any adult express opposition to hunting while I was very young. This, I believe now as an adult of advancing years, is part of the great divide between rural America and urban/suburban America.

Humans are omnivores. We would not be what we are today if meat were not a big part of our diet. The high protein of meat in our diet allowed our brains to develop. This is fact, not opinion.

Some people who have been hunters will quit hunting for various reasons: because they get too old, because they do not find the time, because they have not seen enough game. But it is highly unlikely that these people will ever be opposed to hunting.

Much more likely, people who oppose hunting will become hunters. I have known a few. This might not happen often, but answering a natural instinct is more likely than turning against it.

These are just beliefs. I do not think I have all of the answers. I do not think that what is right for me is right for everyone. Sharing, trying to share, anyway, that which gives so much pleasure is something I must do, nonetheless.

So I can only reply to anyone who asks why I hunt, the answer is simply because I love it. There is no point in discussing the matter any further.